PESHAWAR, Jan 20: Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has once again opted to make at source deduction against the NWFP government’s electricity duty account, official sources told Dawn here on Monday.

According to the sources in the provincial government, Wapda recently deducted at source Rs89.5 million on account of arrears what it claimed were payable by some of the provincial public sector departments.

The move on the part of Wapda has come at a time when the legitimacy of the Rs1.8 billion deducted at source during the last financial year has yet to be established.

Representatives of Wapda and the NWFP government’s line departments are presently engaged in a recently undertaken drive to reconcile the figures of electricity bills issued by Wapda and payments made against them by these departments.

The drive is, apparently, aimed at resolving differences between the government and Wapda over the contentious issue of book adjustments.

The latest incident of at source deduction by Wapda, the sources said, had been made against NWFP’s electricity duty account — a provincial levy which Wapda collects from electricity consumers every month.

The sources said that the provincial government was likely to move the federal authorities concerned against Wapda’s move, though they appeared to apprehensive of the chances of getting attention from the federal government.

In the last financial year Wapda deducted at source Rs428m against NWFP’s electricity duty account whereas in the 2000-01 it made book adjustments of Rs209m in comparison with Rs255 million deducted in 1999-2000.